From the outset, then, Graves establishes a fatalistic tone that plays out at the end of Graves’ second novel, Claudius the God in which he himself is poisoned by his own wife, and succeeded by her wicked son Nero. The penultimate verse concerns his own reign, and Claudius can tell the identity of the last emperor described. The Caesars – from the Latin word “caesar”, meaning “a fine head of hair”) who are to rule Rome. This concerns the fates of the “hairy ones” (i.e. In an early episode, Claudius is privy to a prophecy contained in the book of “Sibylline Curiosities”. The fact that he was always perceived to be mentally deficient was in fact a boon to Claudius, since he was not perceived to be a threat to his ambitious relatives.In Graves’ version, he uses the peculiarities of Claudius’ nature to develop a sympathetic character whose survival in a murderous dynasty depended largely upon his family’s incorrect assumption about him. The novel, afforded Graves a way to write about the lives of the first four Emperors of Rome (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius) from an insiders view. In doing so he draws back the veil of history to show behind the scenes of court life, into the family machinations of a treacherous dynasty. Graves, a British scholar and historian, translated the works of Roman historian Suetonius from Latin into English and claimed that Claudius came to him in a dream and demanded that his real story be told. Since Claudius, is known to have written an autobiography that covered the lives of the Caesars, an eight volumes, a work which is now lost, Graves determined to “discover” the work in his own way. His mother Antonia was the daughter of Marc Antony and his father Drusus was the second son of brilliant but evil Livia, Augustus’ wife. This was largely due to his nervous tics, stammering and a significant limp. The novel recounts Claudius’ life within a family who view him as somewhat of an idiot.

Long before HBO gave us ROME and other mini-series, Graves account boldly takes on the behind the scenes account of family machinations, wives, mothers, lovers and alliances pulling the strings of history.

The book, which narrates the lives of the Emperors from Julius Caesar’s death at the hands of the Senate in 44 BC to Caligula’s assassination in 41 AD, is written as an autobiography and memoir of the Emperor Claudius. The novel, I, Claudius, by Robert Graves is a clever work of historical fiction spanning 80 years of early imperial Rome.

I claudius 1934